


The Better to Hold You With, My Dear

by AstroGirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Episode Related, Gen, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:25:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's only ever wanted to keep her granddaughter safe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Better to Hold You With, My Dear

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [Andraste](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andraste/pseuds/Andraste) in the [RoundOne](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/RoundOne) collection. 



> **Prompt:** Watching Red make the same mistakes she did isn't easy. Making new mistakes herself is even harder.
> 
>  **Notes:** Contains major spoilers for "Red-Handed," and possibly some for "Child of the Moon." Also, while I'm afraid this might only rather tangentially fit the theme for this round of the fest, it does, I think, fit the prompt, which fits the theme. That's close enough... right?

The Widow Lucas doesn't sleep much on full moon nights. Couldn't even if she wanted to. It may have been years since her last transformation, but that doesn't mean the wolf she was isn't still a part of her, doesn't mean the effects don't linger. Every Wolvestime, even now, the scars on her arm burn and itch as if they want to do something to her body and can't quite remember what it is. Her senses grow keener, every wafting scent or flicker of shadow looming larger in her mind. The memories, too, are sharper, more present, somehow, whether she wants them to be or not. Even now, part of her still wants to howl at the moon, to rip into flesh, to run with the beasts... and most of her hates that part. It's not a restful combination.

Which she figures is just as well. She has responsibilities, after all. She has to watch over the girl and keep her safe. Has to protect her from hunters who might guess what that cloak of hers is hiding and come to make her their prey. (She can, on these bright nights, still see Red's grandfather's body, human and crumpled and harmless-looking in death, the night he finally met the fate they'd both known he deserved. It's funny how much that memory hurts.) Has to protect her from other wolves, too, who might yet want to take her and make her into a beast like them. (She can also remember the night Anita left this house, so proud and so defiant, can remember the cold, sick feeling in her gut as she realized she'd failed her daughter, horribly and irrevocably, and that she must never, never fail her granddaughter the same way.) Most of all, she has to protect the girl from herself. Has to make sure she's properly covered up in her magic cloak, to keep her forever innocent of the dark appetites she's inherited.

But Red is a foolish, willful girl. As girls of that age are. She wants her freedom, wants her own way, and she thinks her stolid, cranky old Granny doesn't understand. As if Granny never ran wild under the moon. As if Granny doesn't know what it's like to wake up from that wildness and feel the shame and regret of having done things you can't ever undo. As if Granny hasn't lost almost everything, everything but Red, because she couldn't keep away from the beast and it wouldn't keep away from her.

Red, she is determined, will never lose anything at all. 

**

And then one night she finds herself standing in a field of bloody, gore-specked snow, as Red's friend leads her, hurt and confused and never to be the same again, away from the approaching hunters. Away from her.

 _Poor Peter,_ she thinks. The poor, dear boy. She'd felt compelled to disapprove of him, desperate to keep anyone from getting close enough to Red to learn what sort of creature she is. But he was a likeable boy. There was no harm in him. And Red truly did seem to love him, in that sweet, uncomplicated way that only the young can love. Perhaps there might have been a future there. Perhaps he wouldn't have been afraid of the wolf, if he hadn't met it like this, and Red might have had someone to hold on to on nights when the call of the moon and the magic of the cloak fought between them to control her. No knowing now, of course. She's seen to it that he'll never get the chance, just as she's seen to it that Red never got to make the choices that should have been hers to make.

The hunters are all around her now, demanding to know what's happened, exclaiming in horrified anger over the body, swearing vengeance against the wolf. With a few curt words, she sends them off in the wrong direction, and they vanish into the night as if they'd never existed. 

She stays, long after they've gone, staring at the thing in the snow that used to be Peter, and thinking what a damn fool she's been.


End file.
